


I'll only sleep among the dead

by brinnanza



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Exhaustion, Gen, Light Angst, basically @ wilde get some self care, extremely minor and vague season four spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22657621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/pseuds/brinnanza
Summary: Oscar doesn’t bother to check the time; it may equally be midnight or nearing dawn, but it makes no difference, not when there is so much left to do.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	I'll only sleep among the dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [In_A_Kingdom_By_The_Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_A_Kingdom_By_The_Sea/gifts).



> anna requested mild wilde angst and so I wrote this for her. it was not what I intended to write tonight but you know what no words are wasted words. title's from the mech's pump shanty

Time starts to go a bit funny in the wee hours of the morning, stretching and shrinking without warning. Every glance at the clock is a surprise in some way, minutes and hours cleaving together and apart. Oscar doesn’t bother to check the time; it may equally be midnight or nearing dawn, but it makes no difference, not when there is so much left to do.

Lamplight flickers yellow across the papers on his desk, and he rubs the heel of his hand against his eyes, hoping to dislodge the itching exhaustion that has settled there, that lives there now. It does no good, as he quite expected, just smears eyeliner across his palm. He twists one hand in a familiar gesture to wipe it away with a brief lick of magic, but the cuffs on his wrists click softly in reminder.

There’s no magic, here. Not anymore. Not for him, at least.

The text on the missive he’s inspecting is in a small, cramped hand, and the letters swim before his vision. It would be difficult to read under optimal conditions, but, well, there are no optimal conditions here either anymore. There is just this, a darkness that creeps like ink outside the circle of the lamp, the wind whistling through the trees, the constant press of exhaustion so heavy that he aches with it. 

But sleep is… a luxury. Once, in a different world, Oscar had taken luxuries as his due, fine wines and food and company. All to fit the part he played, of course, but a pleasurable enough existence. There had certainly been a great deal of pleasure in his work.

There is very little pleasure to be found these days.

In his more desperate moments, he wonders what it would be like, to let himself drown in it. To sink beneath the waves of that constant, hidden grief. To just… let go. He won’t, he knows that, knows it with a bone-deep surety, the only thing that holds him upright some nights. There is too much to do, too much at stake, and if one man’s suffering is the price to repair a broken world, then so be it.

It won’t be enough.


End file.
